Robert Hazell was a
late comer to academe, coming to UCL in 1995 at the age of 45. After degrees from Oxford in PPE and Law, he started his career
as a barrister from 1973-75. He then
joined the Home Office, and was a policy making civil servant from 1975 to
1989, working in immigration, police, prisons, broadcasting, race relations,
drugs and criminal justice policy. He
left Whitehall to
become Director of the Nuffield Foundation for six years, and then left the
Nuffield to found the Constitution Unit at UCL in 1995. He was given a personal chair as Professor of
Government and the Constitution by UCL in 1999. In 2006 he was awarded the CBE for his services to constitutional
reform. In 2009 Robert Hazell was awarded the
Political Studies Communication Award for his work in developing and
communicating the constitutional reform agenda.

Britain's
constantly morphing constitutional landscape needs an ace cartographer
to make sense of it, and in Robert Hazell it has found one (Lord
Hennessy)

The Constitution
Unit is an independent think tank specialising in constitutional reform. In its first two years (1995-97) it published
detailed reports on how to implement the opposition parties’ proposals for
devolution to Scotland and Wales; Lords reform; incorporation of the ECHR;
voting reform; freedom of information; and the conduct of referendums. After the Labour government was elected in
1997 the Unit continued to do detailed work on how to plan and implement
constitutional reforms, keeping one step ahead of the government’s own
constitutional reform programme. The
Unit is the single largest centre of expertise on constitutional reform in the UK,
and has published over 150 reports and research papers.

Interests

Robert’s
research interests cover the whole of the constitutional reform agenda. He has written widely on devolution in Scotland, Wales and the English regions;
freedom of information; parliamentary reform and Lords reform; a British bill
of rights; referendums; electoral reform; the Crown and royal prerogative;
constitutional watchdogs; and the process of constitutional reform. He is a great
believer in collaborative research and likes to build research teams around
projects, and to write edited books rather than monographs.

He
was director of the 1999-2005 Leverhulme funded research programme into the
Dynamics of Devolution, which had 12 projects and 25 partners. He continued
with some of the same partners to direct an ESRC and government funded project
monitoring the latest developments in devolution (2006-2008). His last
collaborative venture with 20 partners was forecasting the shape of the
constitution in 2020. More recent work
has studied the impact of Freedom of Information on Whitehall (ESRC 2007-2009), and on local
government (ESRC 2009-2011), and on Parliament (Leverhulme 2009-2011).

Grants

Robert
has been awarded around 50 major research grants. These include six grants from
the ESRC, and research funds totalling over £5m from the Ministry of Justice, Cabinet
Office, Scotland Office, Wales Office, Scottish government, and House of
Commons; and from the Leverhulme Trust, Nuffield Foundation, Joseph Rowntree
Charitable Trust, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation,
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Nuffield Trust, Pilgrim Trust.

Networks

The Constitution
Unit is at the centre of several national and international networks. Robert’s research projects have included
working in partnership with academics from the universities of Aberstwyth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Dundee,
Edinburgh, Glamorgan, Glasgow,
LSE, Manchester, Napier, Newcastle,
Queen’s Belfast, Swansea,
Strathclyde, and Ulster. Overseas partners have included experts from
the Australian National
University, Queen’s University
Ontario, Victoria University Wellington. He is a member of the International
Association of Constitutional Lawyers, the Political Studies Association, the
Society of Legal Scholars and the International Association of Centres for
Federal Studies (1999-2009).

Policy impact

Robert has remained close to Whitehall, and continues
to advise the civil service and the political parties on constitutional reform
matters. He has served on four different
government advisory bodies on freedom of information, and three times acted as
Special Adviser to parliamentary committees. He has given evidence to numerous official bodies and parliamentary
committees, and done consultancy for the House of Commons, House of Lords,
Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice, Information Commissioner, Scottish
Parliament and World Bank.

The main policy changes which he has helped
to influence include:

Holding pre rather than post legislative
referendums in 1997 on devolution in Scotland
and Wales

Defining the powers reserved rather than
the powers devolved in the Scotland Act 1998, reversing the architecture of the
Scotland Act 1978

Reforming the House of Lords in stages,
rather than a single big bang

Establishing the Electoral Commission to
supervise referendums and elections

Introducing policy and development grants
as part of the funding of political parties

Making the case for the new Supreme Court

Proposing a two stage referendum process
before Scotland
might become independent

Encouraging the adoption of a proper
Cabinet Manual for Whitehall.

Media Impact

Robert has written articles for all the
main national newspapers, and is a regular contributor to Prospect. He has given frequent
interviews for BBC Radio 4 (Today, World Tonight, World at One, Week at
Westminster) and BBC TV (News at Ten, Newsnight) and ITN (C4 News), as well as
overseas broadcasters (ABC, CBC, CNN, Sky etc).

In 2009 he was awarded the Political
Studies Association’s Communication Award for ‘consistently working to develop
the constitutional reform agenda, to communicate these ideas to government and
more generally to inject academic rigour and principle into public debate’.

Robert welcomes applications from potential
PhD students in any of his areas of interest. He particularly welcomes applications from part time students and those
with experience of working in government.